In Citizen and Subject, Mahmood Mamdani challenges dominant views of the crisis of postcolonial Africa, particularly that the problems the continent faces are home grown. Citizen and Subject insists that the current crisis is the institutional legacy of colonialism. Mamdani explains that reforms after independence have deracialized, but not democratized, the African state. Nor have they abolished the two-pronged structure of the colonial era, characterized by different systems of administration—one traditional and rural, the other urban and modern. Instead, they have simply reproduced them, tainting these institutions with the colonial legacy and making them unfit for purpose.